What I’m Reading – Invasive

Invasive by Chuck Wendig (2016) – A new breed of aggressive ants kill a man in rural New York State. FBI futurist Hannah Stander gets called in to try and discover what happened. The answer will take her halfway around the world and to the doorstep of the world’s end.

Chuck Wendig, NY Times best-selling author and John W. Campbell Award finalist, has been on my list of “Authors I Should Read” for a while. Turns out, I should have grabbed one of his books sooner.

If you love thrillers, you will love this book. On the other hand, if you hate ants, you should read some other Wendig novel. There’s a concept called “formication”, which describes the feeling that an insect is crawling on your skin. “Invasive” will trigger that feeling over and over again.

The story looks at the questions and challenges that can arise out of scientific advances like genetic engineering. Like the question raised by Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, we need to examine not only the question “can we?”, but also “should we?”

All the familiar thriller parts are included here – a flawed hero, an ego-driven villain, a fascinating technical aspect, and plenty of twists and turns. Here the internal challenges facing Hannah Stander are rooted in her parents’ “prepper” paranoia. They raised her in the belief that civilization would end in catastrophe. That background supplies Stander with a honed set of survival skills and profound anxiety issues. This makes her an interesting and unique character who has to deal with the peculiar situations of the book.

Wendig provides everything you want in a techno-thriller – tension, tightly constructed action, interesting characters, and a fantastic but realistic problem.

You just have to learn to deal with the creepy crawly feelings.

Do yourself a favor, don’t wait as long as I did to check Wendig out!

Rating – ****